"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Monday, July 22, 2013

This Day in History: Jul 22, 1991: Cannibal and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is caught

Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
police officers spot Tracy Edwards running down the street in
handcuffs, and upon investigation, they find one of the grisliest scenes
in modern history-Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment.

Edwards told the police that Dahmer had held him at his apartment and
threatened to kill him. Although they initially thought the story was
dubious, the officers took Edwards back to Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer
calmly explained that the whole matter was simply a misunderstanding and
the officers almost believed him. However, they spotted a few Polaroid
photos of dismembered bodies, and Dahmer was arrested.

When Dahmer's apartment was fully searched, a house of horrors was
revealed. In addition to photo albums full of pictures of body parts,
the apartment was littered with human remains: Several heads were in the
refrigerator and freezer; two skulls were on top of the computer; and a
57-gallon drum containing several bodies decomposing in chemicals was
found in a corner of the bedroom. There was also evidence to suggest
that Dahmer had been eating some of his victims.

Neighbors told both detectives and the press that they had noticed an
awful smell emanating from the apartment but that Dahmer had explained
it away as expired meat. However, the most shocking revelation about
how Dahmer had managed to conceal his awful crimes in the middle of a
city apartment building would come a few days later.

Apparently, police had been called two months earlier about a naked
and bleeding 14-year-old boy being chased down an alley by Dahmer. The
responding officers actually returned the boy, who had been drugged, to
Dahmer's apartment–where he was promptly killed. The officers, who said
that they believed it to be a domestic dispute, were later fired.

A forensic examination of the apartment turned up 11 victims–the
first of whom disappeared in March 1989, just two months before Dahmer
successfully escaped a prison sentence for child molestation by telling
the judge that he was desperately seeking to change his conduct. Dahmer
later confessed to 17 murders in all, dating back to his first victim in
1978.

The jury rejected Dahmer's insanity defense, and he was sentenced to
15 life terms. He survived one attempt on his life in July 1994, but was
killed by another inmate on November 28, 1994.